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Léon Jouhaux - Nobel Lecture

Fifty Years of Trade-Union Activity in Behalf of Peace

It will certainly come as no surprise to
you when I tell you that one of the most moving, as well as one
of the happiest, moments of my life occurred on the evening of
Monday, November 5, 1951. A reporter whose initiative I have
already commended to the French Broadcasting System, eager to
satisfy his professional conscience by extracting a sensational
statement from me, came to inform me at a somewhat late hour that
the Nobel Peace Prize Committee of the Norwegian Parliament had
just bestowed on me one of the most renowned and flattering
distinctions that this world can offer.

Perhaps he was disappointed by my reception
and by the way in which I immediately identified myself with the
working classes and their trade unions when I responded to the
award of this prize, which reflects so much honour on its
founder, on those whose mission it is to confer it, and on him
who receives it. But I can assure you that not for the briefest
instant did I believe that it was I alone who was the recipient
of this great reward.

I have never ceased to do my utmost to be
the faithful interpreter and devoted servant of the ideals of
peace and justice upheld by out trade-union organizations, and at
such a solemn moment it was natural for me to regard myself
simply as their representative. I speak as their representative
now as I review for you their constant efforts to hasten the
advent of an era of peace for which all men long and in which, to
borrow the words of Jean Jaurès1, "mankind, finally at peace with itself"
will pursue its own destiny in joy and harmony.

My emotion was, nonetheless, great. Neither
my friends nor my family, who should know me better than anyone
else does, have ever doubted the strength of my nerves. They
would be more likely to reproach me - and sometimes with less
than kindly truculence -for a calmness that some of them call
placidity. True enough, nature has endowed me with a fair measure
of patience and composure, yet I should be lying if I told you
that, having seen the reporter off on his way to make his
deadline, I fell peacefully asleep. That evening, all that night,
I waited in vain for a slumber that wouldn't come.

And during those long hours I was assailed
by many memories. I saw again the house where I was born, which
disappeared in 1898 with the abattoir of Grenelle. I was not
quite two years old when my parents left it and, after a brief
stay in the country, made a home in Aubervilliers. This town so
near Paris where I spent my youth was the Aubervilliers of the
end of the last century. Being at that time more than half
agricultural, it scarcely resembled the industrial city of today.
It afforded us children wide-open spaces, covered with grain in
the summer, and it gave us the clear waters of the Courneuve
River flowing nearby where we spent many pleasant hours of
bathing and swimming.

This almost rustic life made me a sturdy
and stable man, and, despite the unpretentiousness of our family
life and its hazards, I look back on those days with considerable
pleasure.

However, it was at Aubervilliers that I
felt for the first time the hard consequences of the struggle of
the workers for improvement of their living conditions. These had
a considerable influence on my future.

My father, a veteran of the Commune2, his convictions and his fighting spirit
unbroken by the defeat of the workers in 1871, took an energetic
and untiring part in the strikes which set the workmen of the
match factory where he worked against the management of the
company prior to its becoming nationalized. The courageous
efforts of my mother, who resumed her job as a cook, were not
enough to compensate us for the loss of my father's wages, and it
was during one of these strikes that I had to leave elementary
school before I was twelve to work at the Central Melting House
in Aubervilliers.

My parents, and especially my mother,
encouraged by the director of the local school which I was
attending, wanted in spite of everything to send me to a National
School of Arts and Crafts so that I could later become an
engineer. I was keen to study and had some natural mechanical
ability, and so I entered the Colbert upper primary school. Less
than a year later, because of a reversal of the family fortunes,
I was forced to leave and go to work in the Michaux Soap Works.
From this time on, except for one more attempt at schooling when
I spent a year at the Diderot Vocational School, I was, at the
age of fourteen, completely caught up in the hard life of the
industrial worker.

When I was sixteen, I became a member of
the trade union at the match works where I had rejoined my
father. I did so without question. My father's vigorous example
and my own experience led me quite naturally to participate in
the worker's movement. I had suffered personally from the social
order. My school work, my intellectual gifts, my eagerness to
study, had all come to nothing. I had been brutally compelled to
leave the upper primary school and even the vocational training
school and to become a wage earner of the humblest order.

This day has been set aside for all
countries to celebrate the anniversary of the adoption by the
United Nations General Assembly of the Universal Declaration of
Human Rights3. And with a passion
fired by these memories of an adolescent deprived of the right to
realize his full intellectual potential, I wish to express my own
conviction that, thanks to the action of true trade unionists and
sincere democrats, all the sacred and inalienable rights of man
will henceforth be recognized without reservation and that man
will be able to exercise these rights without hindrance.

The feeling of having been unjustly treated
drove me to spend much time in the library of the Aubervilliers
libertarian group, one of the few places where I could escape
intellectually from my situation. Reading the books that I found
there reinforced my feelings of rebellion against the established
order and against social injustice.

I propose now to review the progress of
trade-union activity for international peace. To this end I shall
disregard all its other aspects, but first, in order to stress by
a personal example its positive results with regard to the
protection of the workers' health, let me give you the reasons
for the first strike in which I took part. I participated in this
strike not simply as a member of the trade union but as its
administrative secretary; in other words - to give you an exact
idea of my functions and responsibilities in this humble office -
I drafted the minutes of meetings of the trade-union council, of
the general assemblies, and sometimes of delegations. I do not
think that I owed this mark of confidence to my worth as a trade
unionist; I owed it, more likely, to my having received a less
sketchy education than that of my comrades: the great school
reforms of the Third Republic had not yet been in existence ten
years.

Instigated by the National Federation of
Match Factory Workers4, itself
adherent to the C.G.T. which had been established in 18955, this strike involved the whole trade
corporation and aimed principally at prohibiting in the
manufacturing process the use of white phosphorus, which
constituted no small danger, particularly to the dental health of
the personnel. The strike lasted over a month, but it led
directly to the calling of the Bern Conference which prohibited
the use of noxious substances6.
This first success naturally could not fail to encourage me to
persevere in trade-union action, which at the same time satisfied
both my urge to work against iniquity and my youthful need for
tangible achievements.

Another consequence of the same strike was
the bringing into use of the "continuous" machine, as it was
called, which increased production as it eased the drudgery of
the workmen. This led me to understand that trade unionism, the
instrument of working-class liberation and of social change
could, and indeed should, be also an instrument of industrial
progress. Nor did it take me long to see therein one of the most
effective means for freeing the world of the always menacing
specter of war.

Why should I not state openly, Ladies and
Gentlemen, the fact that the first manifestation of the
trade-union struggle for peace, and particularly the French
trade-union struggle into which I threw myself with all the
ardour of my youth, was antimilitaristic in thought and sometimes
also in deed? Is not one of the greatest sins against the spirit
that of knowingly concealing the truth? And would it not be
ridiculous to reproach the trade-union movement with having
confused cause and effect? Sociologists worthy of the name never
make the mistake of reproaching primitive peoples for their
belief that the sun moves round the earth. We too, through lack
of knowledge and of sufficiently mature reflection, mistook the
visible outward appearance of the phenomenon for the phenomenon
itself. I would add that my memory of that period, perhaps
because of the mirage which the passage of the years evokes, is
that of a great enthusiasm, undoubtedly sparked more by
irrational hope than by any constructive will; but that fervour
makes me feel all the more bitter about the atmosphere of
indifference, fatalism, and resignation that has persisted up to
the present time on our continent, a continent which two wars
seem to have ravaged morally as well as physically. An orator
once exclaimed: "When war breaks out, its principal victims are
always the people." He was more right than he knew. Not only does
war kill workers by the thousand, nay, by the million, destroy
their homes, lay waste the fields which took them centuries of
effort to cultivate, raze to the ground the factories they built
with their own hands, and reduce for years the standard of living
of the working masses, but it also gives man an increasingly
acute feeling of his helplessness before the forces of violence,
and consequently severely retards his progress toward an age of
peace, justice, and well-being.

Oh yes! we were full of enthusiasm back in
1900. Nothing, no matter what it was, seemed impossible to us
then, and we had every reason to believe it. We felt already that
after Viktor Adler, Wilbur Wright was going to give us
wings7.

On completion of my military service, I
went back to the factory and to the trade union. From here on,
however, I am going to take myself out of the story of the
movement - not because our paths diverged, indeed they
intermingle after 1909 - but because trade unionism, despite its
close initial connections with libertarian individualism, is
essentially and by definition a collective work.

A moment ago, I mentioned in passing the
creation in 1895 of the Confédération
générale du travail (C.G.T.). It replaced the National
Federation of Trade Unions [Fédération des Syndicats et
Groupes corporatifs ouvriers de France], which had been founded
in 1886. Actually, unity of the workers under the C.G.T. was not
completely achieved until 1902 when, at the Montpellier Congress,
the Federation of Labour Exchanges (Fédération
nationale des Bourses du travail) was incorporated in the C.G.T.
as the Division of Labour Exchanges. However, during this period
in which the unity of the working classes was being consolidated,
the C.G.T., in its annual congresses, had already gone beyond
questions of organization and corporate claims and as early as
1898 had taken its stand in favour of general disarmament:

"The Congress (the motion stated in a
somewhat antiquated style) considering all peoples to be brothers
and war to be mankind's greatest calamity, [and]

Holding that armed peace leads all peoples
to ruin through the increase in taxation required to meet the
enormous expense of standing armies,

Declares that money spent on the
perpetration of acts suitable only to barbarians and on the
support of young, strong, and vigorous men for a period of years
would be better used for work serving humanity, [and]

Expresses the wish [voeu] that
general disarmament take place as soon as possible."

In 1900 and in 1901, the C.G.T. progressed
from theoretical declarations to practical considerations; it
decided that "young workers about to undergo conscription should
be put in touch with the secretaries of the Labour Exchanges of
the towns in which they are to be garrisoned", and agreed in
principle to the setting up of a Serviceman's Fund.

Today these declarations and decisions seem
very mild. We must not forget, however, that they were
accompanied by a significant antimilitaristic agitation which had
found solid support in the impassioned propaganda for a retrial
of the Dreyfus case8. This was
opposed with equal vigour by militarists whose affinity with a
discredited Council of War laid open the army and particularly
its officers to fatal, if unfair, suspicion as far as democratic
opinion was concerned.

All the C.G.T. congresses, which took place
biennially after 1902, were deeply concerned with action in
support of peace. At the outbreak of the Russo-Japanese
War9, the 1904 Congress, held at
Bourges, declared: "At a time when two nations are at each
other's throats, re-enacting on a wider scale the slaughter of
the past for the greater good of the ruling classes and
exploiters who enslave the proletariat of the whole world, this
Congress... censures the ignoble attitude of the governments of
the two nations concerned, which, with the object of finding an
outlet for the mounting discontent of the proletariat, appeal to
chauvinistic passions and unhesitatingly organize the death and
assassination of thousands of workers in order to safeguard their
own privileged position."

The international sky was increasingly
overcast, and the attitude of the unions stiffened. The 1906
Congress approved "all programs of antimilitaristic propaganda",
and that of 1908 contemplated replying to a "declaration of war
with a declaration of a revolutionary general strike". The
Congresses of 1910 and 1912 confirmed these resolutions and
strongly protested against repression, but 1912 was the year of
the Balkan War10 and, in view of
the rivalries which began to make themselves felt and which
threatened to spread the conflict even farther, a special
conference held on the first of October decided to call a
congress whose sole objective would be to combat the menace of
war. The motion passed was a true indication of the confidence of
the trade-union organizations in their growing strength. To stop
the governments from being drawn any further down the slope to
the yawning chasm of fire and blood, the Congress affirmed its
resolution to take revolutionary action in the event of military
mobilization.

We would gain a false impression of the
importance and effectiveness of labour action if we confined
ourselves to the motions passed at its congresses. The trade
unions, far from being content with these declarations,
established international liaisons and supported every policy
based on pacification and understanding. Between 1900 and 1901
the C.G.T. and the English working classes together contributed
to bringing about the Entente Cordiale11. To gain an idea of the value of this
contribution, it is necessary only to reflect upon the tension
which followed the Fashoda incident12 and to thumb through the collections
of satirical publications of those days.

At the time of the Agadir incident13, on July 22, 1911, a delegation from
the C.G.T. left for Berlin, and in the following month a
trade-union delegation from Germany arrived in Paris. The French
and the German proletariat were uniting their efforts to try to
avert war.

These occasional international contacts
were not, however, the only ones to be established between the
various national trade-union organizations. Several international
workers' congresses were held after the abolition of the workers'
International. One met in Zurich in 1895 and one in London in
1896, bringing together delegates of the trade unions and
representatives of socialist-minded political parties. In London,
the French delegation included, among other trade unionists:
Fernand Pelloutier, the Guérard brothers, and Keufer14. The results of this cooperation - or
confusion, as the more critical historians would have it - were
not outstanding, and the idea of a purely trade-union
international organization first came up at the Congress of
Scandinavian Trade Unions in Copenhagen in 1901, thanks to the
direct contact among fraternal delegations. The proposal came
from Legien15 who represented the
General Committee of German Trade Unions. It was decided to
request the various national organizations to attend the Congress
of German Trade Unions at Stuttgart in 1902. The organizations of
Germany, Great Britain, Austria, Belgium, Bohemia, Denmark,
Spain, France, The Netherlands, Italy, Norway, Sweden, and
Switzerland responded to the appeal and approved the proposal to
organize international trade-union congresses which would take
place at more or less regular intervals. Their mandate remained
limited, at first extending only to the compilation of common
statistics, the exchange of information on legislation affecting
labour, and eventually to solidarity in the event of important
strikes. Nevertheless, the first international link had been
forged, and it was later strengthened in Dublin in 1903 by the
creation of an International Trade-Union Secretariat.

Without formally withdrawing from the
Secretariat, our French C.G.T. suspended the payment of its
contributions in 1904 after the Secretariat had refused to
include the question of antimilitarism in the agenda for the
Conference of Amsterdam. I would not go so far as to say that the
French trade unions attached greater importance to the struggle
for peace than the others did; but they certainly seemed to take
it more to heart.

Relations were renewed following the C.G.T.
Congress in Marseilles in 1908 and the Secretariat's acquiescence
to the demand that the calling of truly international congresses
be included in the agenda of the next conference.

This, the fifth Conference, took place in
Paris and included some spirited debates - quite spirited, in
fact. Having become its secretary, I was the spokesman for the
C.G.T. I recently referred to this meeting in an article, and I
think I can do no better than to quote its opening words, for
they pinpoint not only our own position but also that of the
representative of the American Federation of Labour.

"I saw Gompers16 again (I wrote) on the evening of
September 1, 1909. It was the second day of the International
Conference of Trade-Union Secretariats. All day I had been asking
for a true international congress, and I had had to ask with a
certain amount of vehemence. At the end of the afternoon session,
after we had won the majority over to the argument of the French
C.G.T., Gompers, who represented the American labour unions
belonging to the A.F. of L. [American Federation of Labour], came
over to me to express his deep satisfaction !"

There were two more conferences, the first
of which was in 1911 at Budapest where this time the A.F. of L.
participated officially and the Industrial Workers of the
World17 unofficially. The second
was in Zurich in 1913. An attempt at an expanded conference,
leading to the international congresses which we had in mind, was
made on the latter occasion by appealing to the International
Vocational Secretariats. The resolution adopted in Zurich
recommended that the trade-union organizations of all countries
study the possibility of setting up an International Federation
of Labour, whose aim "would be to protect and extend the rights
and interests of the wage earners of all countries and" - I
emphasize this last part of the sentence - "to achieve
international fraternity and solidarity".

The trade-union movement was emerging from
its infancy and beginning to be aware of the magnitude of its
future. In Zurich it no longer thought of itself as the
expression of a single social class; the international solidarity
which it was trying to bring about was already something quite
different from the solidarity of workers in time of strike - all
that had been envisaged up to that time. The dramatic events
which its development precipitated were soon to hasten its
maturity.

Men of my generation will never forget the
last days of July, 1914, least of all those who tried to build a
dike against the onrushing sea of blood. After July 27 our C.G.T.
never ceased trying to achieve the impossible. To leaders still
adhering in spirit to the old motto of "Ultimate Right", which
kings used to engrave on their cannons, it opposed the common
sense of the man in the street. "War", it cried, "is no solution
to the problems facing us; it is, and always will be, the most
terrible of human-calamities. Let us do everything to avoid it."
On Friday, July 30, the C.G.T. cabled the supreme appeal to the
International Secretariat, beseeching it to intervene by
"exerting pressure on the governments".

Alas! As we all know, these desperate
efforts were in vain!

This disaster did not force us to abandon
our ideal; on the contrary, from the very first months of the
conflict, it led us to define precisely the conditions for its
realization.

In fact, at the end of 1914, the A.F. of L.
took the initiative of proposing to hold "an International
Conference of National Trade-Union Organizations on the same day
and in the same place that the Peace Congress would be held, in
order to help restore good relations between proletariat
organizations and to encourage participation with the Peace
Congress in laying the foundations of a definitive and lasting
peace". Le Comité confédéral of the C.G.T.
accepted this proposal and itself issued a manifesto to all the
trade-union organizations. I believe that the major portion of
this text has become less dated than all of its predecessors. It
concludes by demanding: the suppression of the system of secret
treaties; an absolute respect for nationalities; the immediate
limitation of armaments on an international scale, a measure
which should lead to total disarmament; and finally compulsory
arbitration for the settlement of all conflicts between
nations.

These ideas were soon well on their way.
The milestones were to be the Conference of Leeds in 1916, that
of London in September, 1917, and those of Stockholm and Bern in
June and October of the same year.

At Leeds the idea of an international
labour organization appeared in a trade-union text which also
drew attention to the danger to the working classes inherent in
the existence of international capitalist competition. In the
report made on behalf of the C.G.T. we affirmed that the Peace
Treaty should, in accordance with the spirit of workers'
organizations, lay the first foundations of the United States of
Europe. In London there was strong support for the idea of the
League of Nations itself, along with all its corollaries: general
disarmament preceded by limitation of armaments, and compulsory
arbitration, both of which the C.G.T. had advocated three years
previously.

At Stockholm in June, 1917, the
representatives of the trade unions in the Central European and
Scandinavian countries declared their complete agreement with the
decisions taken at Leeds and even expressed their congratulations
to the union organizations of the Allied countries and most
particularly to the C.G.T. Another International Conference of
Trade Unions was called at Bern for the beginning of October,
1917, by the Association of Swiss Trade Unions. The national
organizations of Germany, Austria, Bohemia, Bulgaria, Denmark,
Hungary, The Netherlands, Norway, Sweden, and Switzerland were
represented, and they confirmed the resolutions adopted at Leeds
and London.

The Inter-Allied Labour and Socialist
Conference which took place in London in February of 1918 was
perhaps even more important. Our French organization delivered a
memorandum there containing, certainly, many ideas that had
already been voiced before, but in it we also demanded the
creation of a supranational authority, the "formation of an
international legislative assembly" and "the gradual development
of an international legislation accepted by all and binding all
in a clearly defined way". We were ahead of our time, far ahead
in fact, since thirty-three years later these proposals have
still not been put into effect. The Conference requested that "at
least one representative of socialism and of labour should sit
with the official representatives at the official Peace
Conference". This request, which was reiterated by the C.G.T. on
December 15, 1918, in more or less identical terms, was granted
by two governments; in consequence, Gompers and I were attached
to the delegations of the U.S.A. and France in the capacity of
technical experts. We collaborated in bringing our efforts in
behalf of the trade-union movement to bear on the elaboration of
the Treaty, particularly insofar as Part XIII18 was concerned. The working classes
were becoming more and more sharply aware of the complex causes
of international malaise.

I shall quote two clauses from that part of
the Treaty which gave birth to the International Labour
Organization and to its permanent instrument the International
Labor Office whose activities and tangible results I need not
recall here. The two clauses of the Treaty read as follows :

"Whereas, The League of Nations has for its
object the establishment of universal peace, and such a peace can
be established only if it is based upon social justice;

And whereas, Conditions of labour exist
involving such injustice, hardship, and privation to large
numbers of people as to produce unrest so great that the peace
and harmony of the world are imperilled; and an improvement of
those conditions is urgently required..."

From 1918 on, trade unionists were to
express from the platforms of their congresses the workers'
desire for peace through a rational organization of the world.
The meetings of the International Labour Office and even the
general Assemblies of the League of Nations, several of which
were to have many sessions, were to excite universal interest in
their proposals. The trade-union organizations nevertheless
continued their autonomous activity. After the International
Conference at Bern in February of 1919 and the Congress of
Amsterdam in July of the same year, the International Trade-Union
Secretariat was replaced by a true International Federation of
Trade Unions19 which immediately
acquired over twenty million members. One of its first acts was
an appeal to International solidarity to alleviate the terrible
misery prevailing within Austria; and the Austrian workers
escaped famine, thanks to the many trainloads of supplies sent by
various trade unions and cooperative societies. The second
intervention of the F.S.I. was on behalf of the Hungarian trade
unions, whose liberty was being threatened.

Some have forgotten - for forgetting is as
blissful as ignorance - that the F.S.I. intervened with equal
vigour on behalf of the Russian workers; its representatives,
O'Grady, Wauters, and later Thomson, actually lived in Russia
until 1923 in order to supervise the distribution of food and
medicines sent by the Federation. Furthermore, it is not
distorting history to say that it was largely through the efforts
and propaganda of our International Federation that the
government of the U.S.S.R. was recognized by the majority of the
great powers.

However, the trade unionists did not
confine themselves to mitigating the cruel consequences of war.
They sought the means to establish a stable peace, emphasizing
that it should be founded on a basis of worldwide economic and
social stability. In fact, the majority of the proposals
ultimately put before the League of Nations originated in the
international congresses of the International Federation of Trade
Unions and in the World Peace Congress which the latter convened
at The Hague in 1922. We asked for the organization of exchanges,
the circulation of manpower, the distribution of raw materials,
and the prohibition of private manufacture of arms for
international circulation.

It was at about this time that the League
of Nations set up a Temporary Mixed Commission for the purpose of
studying methods for dealing with international traffic in
armaments, munitions, and war matériel20. The opinion of the workers now
carried such weight that the Commission included three
representatives of the workers from the Governing Body of the
International Labour Office. A convention was drawn up on June
17, 1925, in which the principle of supervision, as opposed to
that of simple propaganda, was recognized, thanks to the efforts
of the labour members, of whom I was one. However, not all of our
suggestions were followed; we had, for instance, requested
internationalised supervision, the auditing of the books of
business enterprises, proper measures designed to prevent
influencing the press and the setting up of international
cartels, together with the standardisation of national
inspections.

It is curious to note - somewhat bitterly -
that the principle of internationalised supervision always meets
with strong opposition. Yesterday it came from the private
manufacture of arms, today from armament itself I remain
convinced, as do my comrades of the C.I.S.L 21, that we cannot talk seriously of
general, or even of partial, disarmament, without accepting the
need for effective international surveillance.

At the Economic Conference of 1927 I was
again spokesman for the trade unions. The principal arguments in
my statement of May 5, were as follows :

"On behalf of my comrades, representing the
workers, I would like at this International Economic Conference
to pay tribute to the recognition of the high ideals which the
trade-union movement has always defended.

It is the opinion of the labour
organizations that economic collaboration between peoples is a
necessity. Immediately after the war during the armistice period
- in February of 1919 - in examining the conditions necessary for
peace and exploring the possible bases on which to found the
League of Nations which was still on the drawing board, so to
speak, the labour and socialist conferences, meeting
simultaneously in Bern, emphasized the necessity of giving the
League of Nations precisely that economic foundation which our
chairman, Monsieur Theunis22,
called for yesterday.

…In 1924, we declared that the
organization of a definitive peace requires not only the
institution of a law of peace but also that of an economy of
peace... No true peace can be established... so long as
quasi-military strategy is applied in economic relations. What is
needed is a committee for economic cooperation."

On May 23, the last day of the Conference,
I voiced the sentiments of my friends when I said: "We have been
bold in criticism, too timid in constructive action."

Three years later, with the idea of
concerted economic action in mind, the Conference sent a
questionnaire to the member states of the League of Nations. The
French government instructed the National Economic Council to
work out the essentials of the French answer. I had been
representing the C.G.T. on this council since its foundation in
1925, and I investigated the practical means of assuring the most
satisfactory conditions for the distribution and optimum
utilization of European raw materials among the various nations.
Expressing the thoughts of my comrades, I suggested, among other
means, the organization of an international information service
on inventories, on production, and on the needs of the various
countries for raw materials.

We also took an active part in 1931 on the
Unemployment Committee of the Commission of Inquiry for European
Union23, in 1933 at the Monetary
and Economic Conference in London, and on the Comité des
grands travaux internationaux, through which the International
Labour Office and the League of Nations, taking up the proposals
of the trade unions, sought to establish healthy collaboration
among nations in the struggle against under-employment and toward
the creation of new sources of wealth. But all these conferences,
all these meetings, succeeded in doing nothing to rid the world
of the prevailing economic crisis. The will to organize the world
on a rational basis, or at least to modify its most apparent
incongruities, had clearly not been strong enough to counteract
the combined effects of inertia, egoism, and incomprehension.

Efforts to wrest weapons away from nations
bending under the weight of so many instruments of death were
equally futile. All the same, I cannot forget the first sessions
of the Conference for the Limitation and Reduction of Armaments.
Those early days of February, 1932, were days of hope for
humanity. Millions confidently awaited the results of the
proceedings of this conference, which was presided over by that
veteran militant Laborite Henderson24, and we can claim, with justification,
to have had a lot to do with the creation of this enthusiasm. The
Socialist Workingmen's International and the International
Federation of Trade Unions, zealously vying with each other, had
each collected thousands of petitions which the delegations
presented to the conference. On February 6, after
Vandervelde25 had spoken on
behalf of the members of the Socialist Worker's International, I
conveyed to the conference the unqualified support of millions of
trade unionists.

That day remains one of the highlights of
my life. I was intensely aware that I was expressing not only the
unanimous hope of the workers of an entire world, still bruised
by the recent holocaust, but also their clear understanding of
the real conditions necessary for disarmament. In their name, I
assured the members of the conference of the complete readiness
of the trade-union organizations to cooperate in making effective
and sincere the procedures of national and international
supervision, without which partial disarmament would be either
illusory or inoperative.

The attempt to bring about disarmament was
as fruitless as the efforts in the economic sphere, and a few
years later, with empty stomachs as its excuse, Italian fascism
launched itself upon Abyssinia. We trade unionists knew very well
that peace was indivisible, and we had no doubt that the weakness
of the League of Nations would render it powerless and herald a
new period of massacre and destruction. We were insistent and
even violent in our demands that the Covenant should be applied
and that sanctions be put into effect. We were voices crying in
the wilderness. The sanctions were not applied; war broke out in
Ethiopia26; and it was followed
fatally, logically, and inexorably by the intervention in
Spain27, the reoccupation of the
left bank of the Rhine28, the
Anschluss29, the Munich
agreements30, and the Second
World War31.

I do not want to enlarge upon our
opposition to this policy of weakness whereby the principle of
collective security was abandoned. We know only too well what the
lack of resolution on the part of the democracies has cost
them.

Once more the earth was laid waste by war.
Even so, we do not believe that action in the cause of peace is a
Sisyphean labour; and that the deadly stone will forever keep on
rolling back down to crush mankind. We will yet manage to lodge
the stone firmly at the top of the hill.

As soon as the Fascists and Nazis had laid
down their arms, the trade unionists began to rethink the
problems of peace.

Toward the end of 1947, the
C.G.T.-F.O32 revived the
traditions and spirit of our old C.G.T., and in speeches,
articles, and reports we again took up and specified the
solutions which the C.G.T., along with the International
Federation of Trade Unions, had offered to the world as a way to
salvation.

We approved the Marshall Plan33 because it was a manifestation of
international solidarity, because its benefits could be extended
to any nation without discrimination, and because we could not
see in it any expression of a policy of prestige or force of arms
since it invested the beneficiary states with the right to use
the credits as they saw fit.

We approved the propaganda in favour of
European Unity and emphasized that we would regard such
unification as the first step on the road to World Unity. In my
capacity as a trade unionist, I was elected president of the
European Movement in February of 1949, and in the following
spring I opened the Westminster Economic Conference34 by expressing our common sentiment as
follows:

"It is normal, it is logical, it is in
conformity with the very spirit of history that the organized
working class should have an active part in the construction of
Europe. It has always proclaimed that it would not, could not,
and had no wish to disassociate the struggle for its emancipation
from the constant battle to maintain peace, because doing so
would have set up barriers which international events would have
swept away like piles of chaff."

It is a matter of Europe's consolidation,
not of its isolation. This human mass, which has such a vast
wealth of natural resources at its disposal and whose
intellectual potential is the greatest on earth, is not willing
to cut itself off from the rest of the world. It is ready to
welcome all who wish to be associated with its efforts: "The
Europe we are building will have more doors and windows than
walls."

In July, 1950, in an introduction to the
reports on the Social Conference of the European Movement, I
stressed again the importance of its objective of international
peace and of social justice:

"We want to make Europe simply a peninsula
of the vast Eurasian Continent, where for thousands of years war
has been the only way to resolve conflicts between peoples. We
want Europe to be a peaceable community united, despite and
within its diversity, in a constant and ardent struggle against
human misery and all the suffering and dangers that it engenders.
We have no desire to make Europe into a larger, better
entrenched, better armed fortress."

We approved the Schuman Plan for a European
Coal and Steel Community35. A few
days after the declaration of May 9, 1950 - on May 31 to be exact
- in commenting on the Ruhr Statute36 in a C.I.S.L. Conference journal, I
wrote :

"The promoters of the <Combinat> can
take as their objective... only the progressive unification of
Europe. However, this unification cannot be an end in itself.

The final and essential goal, the only
valid goal, is to extend the well-being of the worker, to give
him a more equitable share of the products of collective work, to
make Europe a social democracy, and to ensure the peace desired
by men of every race and tongue by proving that the democracies
can bring about social justice through the rational organization
of production without sacrificing the liberty and the dignity of
the individual.

... The pool should be only one stage in a
process of continuous creation. The C.I.S.L. has decided to
follow its development closely in order to be in a position to
give it effective collaboration."

We recommended the organization of a
worldwide market for raw materials and in this connection
recalled just what it is that we intend to defend in defending
democracy :

"What are we all trying to save? What are
we trying to safeguard? Civil liberties: specifically, the right
of all citizens to hold their own opinions and to express them
freely on the great questions of moral, philosophical, political,
and economic import, and the right to form associations. But
democracy is not, nor can it be, merely a theoretical respect for
these rights. It must give every man effective opportunities to
enjoy them, and it must do so under the kind of moral and
material conditions that will encourage him to exercise such
rights.

One who must be constantly preoccupied with
his own subsistence cannot be an alert citizen.

I said recently in a short address to the
Economic Council that economic justice is one of the factors in
the moral health of nations. There is no economic order in
inflationist policies and in underemployment."

The C.I.S.L. commissioned me to put before
the U.N. Assembly at Lake Success a draft resolution whose main
paragraph read as follows: "The General Assembly... recommends to
the participating nations that they seek above all the means of
establishing international regulation of the distribution and
cost of raw materials and that, to this end, they contribute to
the creation of a common stabilization fund."

We have constantly defended the two
inseparable principles of collective security and general
disarmament, effected through the reassessment and international
supervision of military strength and of all categories of
instruments of war.

A synthesis of our doctrine was attempted
on the occasion of the C.I.S.L. Congress at Milan in July, 1951,
in the report on the role of the trade-union movement in
international crisis.

In this report we have fixed our
objectives: first and above all, to spare humanity the colossal
ordeal of a third world war.

In it we have stated our principles : to
act within the framework and under the aegis of the United
Nations Organization, to develop a spirit of community and a
spirit of cooperation, and to return to collective economic
disciplines.

Finally, we have set forth some of the
forms our activity will take: the organization of the
distribution of raw materials and the fixing of the prices of
basic products; the solution of the housing problem; the fight
against restrictive practices in production by national and
international cartels; and above all the effective participation
of the organized workers in the management of social and economic
affairs in every country in the world. Since this Congress is the
most recent of the many manifestations of the desire for peace on
the part of the free trade unions, I believe I could give no
better conclusion to this survey of fifty years of trade-union
activity in behalf of the rational organization of the world and
of peace - which are absolutely inseparable - than by giving the
final lines of this report practically unaltered.

The free trade-union movement is called on
to play an essential part in the fight against international
crisis and for the advent of true peace. The scope of the task is
enormous, matched only by its urgency. Our movement intends to
devote its efforts to this task regardless of the cost. I might
add that it was enormously encouraged by the recent interventions
of the government delegates on the Third Committee of the present
General Assembly of the United Nations. The Cuban delegate Mr.
Ichaso, among others, showed that certain official circles had
adopted the idea which we have been propagating for years and
which we have already succeeded in putting into the Treaty of
Versailles: the idea that economic disorder and misery are among
the determinative causes of wars.

The decision of the Committee of the
Norwegian Parliament, which, in awarding me the Nobel Peace Prize
for 1951, has recognized and proclaimed the importance and the
steadfastness of the pacifist efforts of the trade unionists,
cannot but greatly assist the spread of these ideas and
considerably extend their sphere of influence. It strengthens the
common will of those who have conceived and submitted these ideas
to the consideration of men, and of those who have been convinced
by them, to work ceaselessly to develop a society free of
injustice and violence.

We know well, alas, that men and their
civilizations are mortal. We wish to leave to indifferent nature
the responsibility of their demise and to free mankind at last
from its remorse for having begotten Cain.

* The laureate
delivered this lecture in the auditorium of the Nobel Institute.
The translation is based on the French text in Les Prix Nobel
en 1951.

2. The Commune
of Paris (March-May, 1871) was set up at the end of the
Franco-Prussian War (1870-1871) by the Parisians who, refusing to
accept Prussian peace terms, held the city, with the aid of the
French National Guard, against the French provisional government
at Versailles; the workers, who had protested the war from the
beginning, had a large part in encouraging and implementing the
revolt.

5.
Confédération générale du travail [General
Confederation of Labour] known as the C.G.T.; one of the leading
French labour organizations, it included, before WWI, almost all
of the organized workers in France. Although individually its
worker members usually voted for Socialists, the C.G.T. kept
itself free of any actual party affiliations until the 1940's
when the Communists gained control of the organization.

6. Conferences
were held in Bern in 1905 and 1906; France was one of the
countries that ratified the resulting convention against use of
white (or yellow) phosphorus.

11. An
informal understanding between Great Britain and France (1904),
settling then colonial differences.

12. A
diplomatic crisis in Anglo-French relations (1898), involving
rival claims in the upper Nile region, occurred when the French
took the town of Fashoda in S. Sudan while the British were
putting down a revolt in N. Sudan. A peaceful settlement was
effected, with the French giving up their claims.

13.
Franco-German relations were strained in 1911 when French troops
intervened in a Moroccan uprising and the German warship
Panther appeared at Agadir; mutual agreements resolved the
crisis.

14. Fernand
Pelloutier (1867-1901), secretary of the Fédération
nationale des Bourses du travail and manager of the weekly
journal L'Ouvrier des deux mondes. One of the Guérard
brothers was at one time secretary of the C.G.T. Auguste Keufer
(1851-1924), positivist leader of the French union reform
movement; secretary of the Fédération du livre until
1920.

15. Karl
Legien (1861-1920), chairman of the General Committee of the
German Free Trade Unions.

16. Samuel
Gompers (1850-1924), American labour leader; in 1881 helped to
found the Federation of Organized Trades and Labour Unions, which
became the American Federation of Labour (A.F. of L.) in 1886;
president of A.F. of L. (1886-1924, except 1895).

17. The
I.W.W. was a revolutionary industrial union founded in Chicago in
1905 which aimed to overthrow capitalism and to set up a
trade-union state.

18. Part XIII
of the Treaty of Versailles became the constitution of the
International Labour Organization.

19.
Fédération syndicale internationale, or F.S.I.;
dissolved in 1945 ; succeeded by the World Federation of Trade
Unions.

20. The
Temporary Mixed Commission for the Reduction of Armaments,
constituted in 1921, also studied other aspects of the armament
problem.

21.
Confédération internationale des syndicats libres,
formed in 1949 to counter the World Federation of Trade Unions
which had become Communist dominated.

23. The
Commission of Inquiry for European Union was created in
September, 1930, under the auspices of the League of Nations,
with Aristide Briand its president. Its Unemployment Committee
was authorized by the League Council early in 1931.

24. Arthur
Henderson (1863-1935), recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize for
1934. See Henderson, in Volume 2, for details on this
conference.

26. In 1935
between Ethiopia and Italy; Italian victory and annexation of
Ethiopia followed in 1936.

27. In the
Spanish Civil War (1936-1939), Germany and Italy supported one
side, Russia the other.

28. Germany
violated the Treaty of Versailles (1919) and the Locarno Pact
(1925) by reoccupying the Rhineland in 1936.

29. The union
of Austria and Germany, which took place, in defiance of the 1919
peace treaties, when Germany annexed Austria in March, 1938.

30. The
Munich Pact of September, 1938, signed by Great Britain, France,
Germany, and Italy, allowed Germany to occupy the Sudetenland in
Czechoslovakia.

31.
1939-1945.

32. Force
Ouvrière, a non-Communist labour federation officially known
as C.G.T.- F.O., was formed in 1947 by a group (including
Jouhaux) that seceded from the C.G.T. because of its Communist
control.

33. The
European Recovery Program, integrating U.S. aid to Europe (after
WWII) with an organized program of recovery and cooperation in
Europe itself, was proposed (1947) by George C. Marshall, U.S.
secretary of state (1947-1949) and recipient of the Nobel Peace
Prize for 1953.

34. The
European Movement (for European unity) later in 1949 created the
Council of Europe, whose objective is a more closely integrated
European community. For an account of the Movement and its
Westminster Economic Conference, see European Movement and the
Council of Europe, with Forewords by Winston S. Churchill and
Paul-Henri Spaak, published on behalf of The European Movement by
Hutchinson, London, 1950.

35. A plan
proposed on May 9, 1950, by Robert Schuman (1886-1963), French
foreign minister (1948-1953), for a European Coal and Steel
Community (ECSC) whose members would pool their coal and steel,
providing a unified market for them - this to be done and
regulated under a supranational authority; the ECSC was
established in 1952, with France, Italy, West Germany, Belgium,
The Netherlands, and Luxembourg as members.

36. Adopted
in December, 1948, at a conference held in London by the United
States, Great Britain, France, and the three Benelux countries,
it provided an authority under which West German coal, coke, and
steel were apportioned between German domestic consumption and
export.